SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 50, No. 1, pages 1–13. ISSN: 0037-7791; online ISSN: 1533-8533© 2003 by Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

Killing the Messenger:The Social Problems of Sociology

JOEL BEST, University of Delaware

One hundred years ago, in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt hoped to avert a coalstrike by establishing an arbitration commission. The miners, of course, insisted that anycommission include a representative of labor, while the mine operators sought to block anylabor appointment by specifying the quali�cations of the various commissioners. However,they agreed that one commissioner should be “a man of prominence, eminent as a sociolo-gist.” Roosevelt broke the log-jam by appointing Edgar E. Clark, chief of the Railway Con-ductors Union, to � ll the sociology slot, on the grounds that anyone in his position musthave “thought and studied deeply on social questions.” The maneuver succeeded and TR’sbiographer, Edmund Morris (2001:166–169), reports: “to the end of his days, [Roosevelt]could rejoice with falsetto giggles at ‘the eminent sociologist.’”

This revealing tale offers several lessons for contemporary sociologists, but I want tofocus on its comic aspect: for one of the greatest U.S. presidents, the term “sociologist” wasfunny, the punch line for a favorite anecdote.

Is there something funny about sociology? Peter L. Berger begins his Invitation to Sociol-ogy (1963:1) with the observation that: “There are very few jokes about sociologists.” Thisperhaps misses the point. In our culture, sociology is rarely taken seriously; when sociolo-gists are recognized, they often become �gures of fun. We’ve all heard the aphorism that asociologist is someone who needs a grant to �nd a house of ill repute, although we’re nolonger sure just who said it—H. L. Mencken? James T. Farrell? Dismissive comments abound.P. J. O’Rourke (2001) says that “sociology is journalism without news.” A British journalistcalls it “the ology everyone loves to hate” (Rayment 1991). Diane Bjorklund (2001:24), afterreviewing more than 80 twentieth-century novels featuring sociologists as characters, notesthat: “. . . in almost none of these novels is the sociologist a particularly admirable or evensympathetic character. There are virtually no positive comments made about sociologists.” Inour culture, the sociologist is almost never a hero, but rather a villain or a fool.

Popular discourse frequently criticizes sociologists and, by extension, sociology. Forsociologists of social problems, of course, the assorted jokes and put-downs can be under-stood as claims, as arguments that there is something wrong with sociology that demandscorrection. That is, even though sociology never receives its own chapter in our thick, four -color social problems textbooks, sociology is—when people bother to pay attention to it—frequently constructed as a social problem.1 My goal in this article is to explore some of

This article is a revised version of the author’s Presidential Address delivered in August 2002 at the Annual Meet-ing of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Diane Bjorklund, Russell R. Dynes, James A. Holstein, Kathleen S.Lowney, Lawrence T. Nichols, and Richard Wilsnack are among those who made helpful comments on earlier versions.Direct correspondence to: Joel Best, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, DE19716-2580. E-mail: joelbest@udel.edu.

1. My analysis falls within a constructionist subgenre that examines claims that identify problematic features ofrelatively mundane, everyday life. At least for some determined claimsmakers, sociology is a social problem, just assome claim meat (Maurer 1995), toys (Best 1998), and drowsiness (Kroll-Smith 2000) are public problems. For intro-ductions to the constructionist approach, see Spector and Kitsuse (1977) or Loseke (2003). I am aware that, in writingthis article, I, too, am constructing some sociological work as problematic.

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these constructions of sociology as a social problem, to analyze this claimsmaking and try toexplain why it is so common. I begin with the rhetoric of critics who are not sociologists,but then I want to turn to critiques from within, to sociologists’ attacks on, if not the entirediscipline, at least one another.

Sociology as a Social Problem

When non-sociologists criticize sociology, their indictments tend to center on threethemes.2 The �rst of these, of course, is that sociology lacks substance. Sociology, we are told,is nothing more than common sense; it is trivial, “the scienti�c study of the obvious.” 3 Fur-ther, it is confused and probably mistaken. One of Iris Murdoch’s (1983:165) characters “was asociologist; he had got into an intellectual muddle early on in life and never managed to getout.” A Harvard economist observed, “Economics is all about how people make choices. Soci-ology is all about why they don’t have any choices to make” (Duesenberry 1960:233), whilean Indian-born economist “explained his personal theory of reincarnation . . .: ‘If you are agood economist, . . . you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist,you are reborn as a sociologist’” (Krugman 1994).

Closely-related is the second complaint, that sociologists cannot communicate what theydo know, that they write in impenetrable, obfuscating jargon. Howard S. Becker (1986:1)notes “. . . everyone knows that sociologists write very badly, so that literary types can makejokes about bad writing just by saying ‘sociology,’ the way vaudeville comedians used to get alaugh just by saying ‘Peoria’ or ‘Cucamonga.’ ” “What is it about sociology,” Russell Baker(1990) asks, “that instantly bogs us down in fens of jargon.” One popular answer is that soci-ology’s complicated language is designed to conceal and compensate for its modest substance.The authoritative Dictionary of Modern English Usage suggests: “Sociology is a new science con-cerning itself with . . . the ordinary affairs of ordinary people. This seems to engender in thosewho write about it a feeling that the lack of any abstruseness in their subject demands acompensatory abstruseness in their language”—this from the entry on “Sociologese”(Fowler 1965:570).4

The third indictment, of course, is that sociology is just ideology, only thinly and disin-genuously disguised as science, that it is the domain of “knee-jerk liberals” and irresponsibleradicals who would coddle criminals while blaming society. Here critics range from those whonaively con�ate socialists with sociologists, to more sophisticated indictments of sociology asdeeply implicated in what are seen as academia’s disturbing turns toward feminism, multicul-turalism, postmodernism, and political correctness (e.g., Goodman 2000; Petersen 1970).

In short, non-sociologists suspect that there isn’t much to sociology, beyond a lot ofunnecessarily complicated verbiage designed to give false authority to leftist politics. While wemay take pride in some of our opponents—after all, being denounced by anti-intellectualignoramuses may enhance our own sense of self-worth—we are hurt, disappointed, anddefensive about the low regard for sociology in other circles. Joan Huber’s (1995) warningthat university administrators value disciplinary centrality, quality of faculty, and quality of

2. I will ignore other, less common charges, such as two mentioned by Neil Smelser (1992:56), that social scienceresearch “is of no use to the government,” and “is basically unscienti� c.”

3. My colleague Frank Scarpitti assures me that this quote comes from Time magazine in the 1950s, although Ihave been unable to track down a citation. Doubts about sociology in turn raise questions about sociologists. Thus,according to Robert D. Leighninger, Jr., the sociology section in Blackwell’s bookstore once featured a sign: “Studies ofpeople who don’t need to be studied by people who do.” For other dismissive portraits of sociologists, see Bjorklund(2001).

4. Again: “. . . sociologists are clothing a paucity of thought in a smokescreen of verbiage or putting a Prussian hel-met, greatcoat, and cavalry boots on a pip-squeak of an idea, the object being intimidation rather than elucidation”(Middleton 1975:59).

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students—and see sociology as falling short on all three criteria—is worrisome. While propos-als to eliminate sociology graduate programs or even departments haven’t been all that com-mon, they have aroused considerable concern.5 And there is the sense that relatively fewsociologists become genuine public intellectuals, that we get less than our share of op-edpieces and “Booknotes” interviews.6 Even the people we’d like to have like us don’t seem tocare for us much.

Sociologists are more than a little sensitive about their discipline’s social standing. Ourshaky reputation has an extensive history, and has led a long line of sociologists to defensive-ness. I remember my professor, Arnold M. Rose, describing one of his professors—I think itwas Louis Wirth—deconstructing a joke.7 The joke went like this: A physicist, a psychologist,and a sociologist are walking down an alley, and they come upon a dead man’s body. Thephysicist stops and declares, “Aha! This is a mass weighing 150 pounds, and it is not inmotion.” The psychologist stops and says, “No—it’s a dead person.” But the sociologist justkeeps on walking because he’s looking for a group. Since Peter Berger complains that therearen’t any jokes about sociologists, I guess we ought to be grateful for this one. But, accordingto Rose, Wirth used to correct this joke for his students, and explain that it was the sociologistwho would know enough to check the man’s pockets, to open his wallet and �nd the identify-ing information that could locate him within the larger society. Wirth’s rebuttal—and all thoseintroductory classes over the decades that have begun with bold declarations that sociology ismore than just common sense—do not strike me as the reactions of a profession completelycon�dent of its own worth.

Claims within Sociology

But, of course, the critiques outsiders have leveled against sociology are nothing com-pared to our history of intradisciplinary bloodletting. There is a long, cranky tradition of soci-ologists denouncing one another, of challenging the worth of each other’s contributions.Landmark statements in this vein include Robert Lynd’s Knowledge for What? (1939), PitriamSorokin’s Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology (1956), C. Wright Mills’s The Sociological Imagina-tion (1959), Alvin Gouldner’s The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970), and Irving LouisHorowitz’s The Decomposition of Sociology (1993). Stephen Cole’s recent collection, What’s Wrongwith Sociology? (2001), features an all-star line-up of contributors who, if not angry, are at leasttroubled. This list only scratches the surface; a full bibliography of contentious, or at least self-conscious, sociology obviously would be much longer. Sociologists, then, routinely constructat least some forms of sociology as problematic.

Sociologists’ critiques of one another tend to parallel those of non-sociologists. There aredoubts about substance. These often take the form of critiques—ranging from dismissiveasides to book-length polemics—of rival theories, methodologies, or even epistemologies.The list of targets has included—and this list is by no means comprehensive—functionalism,con�ict theory, ethnomethodology, feminism, rational choice theory, postmodernism, symbolicinteractionism, path analysis, advocacy research, sponsored research, qualitative sociology, quan-titative sociology, and positivism. We can at least suspect that there is no form of sociolo-gical analysis that has not been denounced by some sociologists. These critiques often take

5. Recent writings on sociology’s precarious relation to the larger society include Gans (1989) and the essays col-lected in Cole (2001), Erikson (1997), and Halliday and Janowitz (1992).

6. This impression may be somewhat mistaken. Richard Posner’s (2001) analysis of 546 public intellectualsidenti�es 37 sociologists (6.8 percent), a number which is fewer than that of historians (57), political scientists (46), oreconomists (45), but greater than the numbers of psychologists (15) or anthropologists (5). However, he found only twosociologists ranked among the top 100 public intellectuals in number of media citations.

7. Both Rose and Wirth were among the 21 people who met to organize SSSP (Abbott 1999:78).

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few prisoners; they depict their targets not as merely �awed or wrong-headed, but as intellec-tually and even morally bankrupt. In comparison, outsiders’ charges that sociology seems triv-ial or obvious appear tolerant, even generous. It is no wonder that, in recent years, seniorsociologists have worried that our discipline lacks a “core.”

Similarly, sociological critics often echo charges about jargon and “sociologese.” In hispresidential address to the American Sociological Association, Alfred McClung Lee (1976:929)spoke of the “jargonized super�ciality and quantophrenia of the A.S.A. periodicals.” And, ofcourse, C. Wright Mills (1959:25–33, 217–220) warned against “socspeak”; his dissection ofthe dif� cult prose of Talcott Parsons became a classic in its own right. We have a surprisinglylarge literature encouraging sociologists to write in clearer, more accessible prose.8 At the sametime, methodological developments have led to the presentation of research �ndings in evermore arcane terms. Thirty years ago, it was not uncommon for anthologies aimed at intro-ductory students to reprint articles from the American Sociological Review and the AmericanJournal of Sociology; very often, the tables in those articles featured percentages or perhaps achi-square test of signi�cance. Today, vastly increased computing power and sophisticated,easily mastered software packages allow analysts to present elaborate tables based on ordi-nary least-squares regression, log-linear regression, and other techniques that few �rst-yearundergraduates can hope to understand, so that it becomes much harder to assign students toread actual sociological research articles. Nor is this methodological distancing found onlyamong quantitative sorts; qualitative analysts increasingly claim to have new, improved meth-ods that they catalog in thick manuals describing varieties of ethnography, interviewing, andinterpretation.

And, of course, sociologists do not hesitate to criticize one another’s ideological stances. Ifnon-sociologists tend to worry that sociology has a leftist bias, sociologists are more likely toattack one another for being reactionary, conservative, or politically incorrect, or at least forbeing pawns of powerful elites and the institutions they control. At the same time, there arecounterclaims that these critics on the left are blinded by ideology. The bitterness of the rheto-ric obscures the larger context within which this intradisciplinary debate occurs. Academicsare more liberal than most Americans, and sociology consistently ranks among academia’smost liberal disciplines. There are few conservatives among sociologists; in fact, many of thesociologists most often accused of “conservatism” were active in socialist causes as studentsand even advocated what was considered radical sociology when they entered the profession(Lipset 2001). What appear to be ideological gulfs within sociology must strike outsiders asintramural � ssures.

There are, in short, plenty of claims that construct sociology as a social problem. Outsiderssuspect that sociologists are pompous, vacuous, ideological wolves, hiding behind scientists’sheepskins. In contrast, those within the discipline are more likely to charge their brethrenwith being sheep, whose wooly thoughts are easily shorn by their masters and used to cloakinjustice in false legitimacy. Typically, our discussions focus on these charges; we debatewhether sociology in fact matches the critics’ descriptions, just as traditional social problemsanalysis focuses on social conditions. But adopting a constructionist approach (see Spector andKitsuse 1977) and redirecting our attention to the process of making claims about social prob-lems offers different insights on the problem of sociology.

The Context for Claims about Sociology

Sociology’s contentious history is � lled with principled disagreements about the logic ofinquiry, the nature of science, and the sociologist’s responsibilities to such higher values as

8. For example, see Becker (1986) or the newsletter Writing Sociology (published from 1993–1997).

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morality, truth, equality, and justice. Needless to say, proponents of various intellectual,theoretical, methodological, and political causes contrast their own principles with theinconsistent, unsound, �awed stances of their opponents. Typically, both our most bitterpolemics and our most carefully reasoned analyses of sociological theory either af�rm orchallenge such principles.

But, of course, almost all social problems rhetoric invokes principled arguments, andanalysts of social problems learn not to take them at face value, but rather to treat declara-tions of values and principles as part of what we seek to explain. We are used to searchingfor the organizational arrangements and interests that provide the foundations upon whichthose principles stand. For example, in trying to grasp why sociologists continue to be so hardon one another, we might consider the institutional context within which their claimsemerge. The history of American sociology is, in part, a story of competitions for socialstanding within the discipline. Remember that the ASR began in an effort to circumvent theUniversity of Chicago’s control over what was then sociology’s leading journal (Lenger-mann 1979), and our own Society for the Study of Social Problems emerged in reaction towhat was seen as Harvard and Columbia’s throttle-hold over the American SociologicalSociety (Abbott 1999; Galliher and Galliher 1995). And those early struggles involved a verysmall discipline; the situation has become much more complex during the last thirty or fortyyears.

Higher education boomed for 25 years following the Second World War, but thenenrollment increases slowed. Worse, many of the students who had been drawn to sociol-ogy by the attention social issues received in the late 1960s left for other majors. For pro-spective academics, and particularly for sociologists, what had been a favorable job marketsuddenly became tight. One consequence of this change was that virtually all colleges anduniversities, able now to pick and choose among many prospective faculty, began to raisetheir expectations for faculty scholarship. The bar for tenure began to rise in virtually everydepartment on every campus. Inevitably, these higher standards put greater pressure onprofessors not just to write more manuscripts, but to �nd conferences or journals wherethey could present or publish their papers. In turn, the number of journals grew, as did boththe size of professional conferences and the number of professional organizations holdingthem.

There were considerable advantages to focusing these new journals and societiesaround particular subject matters, theoretical orientations, or methodologies. Why startanother general sociology journal, sure to rank below those already well-established,when one could establish the �rst—and therefore leading—journal in some specialty?Often, like-minded individuals coalesced because they felt they weren’t getting their duefrom the sociological establishment; the big journals didn’t seem to welcome their work,and other professional rewards—editorships, book awards, elective of� ces, and such—rarely came their way. Why not start a league of one’s own?9 (Note that this occurred, notjust in opposition to the American Sociological Association, but also within that organi-zation, via the proliferation of sections.) Thus, just to give the �avor of what’s been goingon in recent decades, let me observe that we now have journals—most begun since 1970—entitled Administration and Society, Armed Forces and Society, Body and Society, Disability and

9. Stephen and Jonathan Turner (1990:192–193) argue that the SSSP provided an organizational role model forthis process:

The founding of the Society for the Study of Social Problems was the �rst important institutional manifestationof the process of alliance creation within groups of sociologists excluded from the new order. It was not the last,and it showed that rebellion was sustainable, even in the hard times of the 1950s. . . . The great shift of the erawas from the legitimacy granted by the publication of authoritative textbooks to a legitimacy granted by thepublication of articles in professional journals. . . . Social Problems was a signi�cant precedent. In the 1960s, thesociety that sponsored it became a haven for rebels of various kinds, but, perhaps more importantly, it served asa monument to the possibility of rejecting tenets of the new order.

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Society, Discourse and Society, Economy and Society, Gender and Society, Health, Risk and Society, Media,Culture and Society, New Media and Society, Rationality and Society, Society and Animals, Society andNatural Resources, Theory and Society, Theory, Culture and Society, Time and Society, and Youth andSociety—to list only a small selection.10

Increasingly, these developments meant that more sociologists became active in smaller, rel-atively homogenous circles, which differentiated themselves from the larger discipline, usually interms of substantive intellectual interests, but also along theoretical, methodological, or politi-cal lines. All manner of interest groups emerged: applied sociologists sought recognition in adiscipline dominated by academics; sociologists concerned foremost with teaching objected tothe overemphasis on scholarship; social movements based on gender, ethnicity, disability, andsexuality inspired parallel efforts within sociology; and there were calls for professionalorganizations to take positions on all sorts of political issues (Simpson and Simpson 2001).Very often, the sociological establishment’s response to these critiques was deemedinsuf�cient, and the dissidents created their own professional organizations, journals, and thelike. The result, according to Alan Wolfe (1992:769), is that “organizationally, as well asintellectually, there is little common experience that de�nes sociology as a profession. Thereare rather many sociologies, each with its own rituals, criteria of membership, status hierar-chies, and career expectations.”

This hodge-podge may be an inevitable result of disciplinary growth; we are long pastthe point where anyone can keep up with all of sociology, or even with one specialty. Thereis often a moment—probably just after completing studying for the comprehensiveexams—when a graduate student may believe that “everything” in at least a couple special-ties has been read and comprehended, but that happy (and illusionary) feeling doesn’t last.Most of us think that we do quite well if we can follow (as opposed to read) the current lit-erature in our specialty, browse through enough meeting programs, book reviews, and jour-nal tables of contents to have some sense of what seems to be going on elsewhere in thediscipline, and perhaps—for an intellectual lark—read an occasional book outside our areas.

Inevitably, we become insular. There is a fragmentation of intellectual interests, as wellas professional and political agendas.11 To be sure, this is not new; remember that sociologyhas a long record of intramural bickering. Still, as the numbers of sociologists, sociologicalorganizations, and journals have expanded, and as the interests they represent have becomemore diverse, there has been growing concern that, to use the current phrase, sociologylacks an intellectual core. In addition, this fragmentation has had important consequencesfor claims that sociology is itself problematic.

Those who study the construction of social problems argue that claims must competefor public attention. In Stephen Hilgartner and Charles Bosk’s (1988) language, claimsemerge in arenas that have limited carrying capacities. We can view sociology’s various pro-fessional organizations and journals as arenas, venues within which claims can be raised.While each arena surely does have a limited carrying capacity (so that most journals mustreject the great majority of the manuscripts submitted to them), the continuing growth inthe number of arenas creates a relatively welcoming environment for claims. We have anextraordinary variety of forums for different sorts of sociology and, should one still be frus-trated by the dif� culty in getting recognition for some substantive topic, theoreticalapproach, methodology, or other concern, there are few obstacles to �nding other, like-minded sociologists and setting up one’s own intellectual shop.

10. A parallel development has been the dramatic growth in the numbers of prizes awarded to recognize excellentbooks, articles, and student papers, as well as various sorts of career achievement awards. Not only do most sociologicalassociations present annual awards, but often their sub-divisions, such as the ASA sections and SSSP divisions, distrib-ute their own prizes.

11. Diana Crane and Henry Small’s (1992:232) study of sociologists’ citation patterns con�rms the discipline’sfragmentation: citations tend to cluster within specialties, rather than linking specialties to one another. They even sug-gest “it is possible that sociology itself is not one discipline but many.”

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These conditions parallel those in contemporary, mainstream media (Best 2001a). Post-Second World War concerns about mass media (so-called because they reached a huge,demographically undifferentiated mass audience) now seem antiquated; contemporary mediasucceed by targeting smaller, homogeneous audiences de�ned by age, gender, class, ethnic-ity, ideology, or interests. This creates an environment within which social problems claimscan proliferate, although many of them circulate only in relatively small arenas.

Thus, the organization of contemporary sociology provides ample venues within whichsociologists who share some orientation toward the discipline can communicate with oneanother. Within these venues, members can af�rm what they share, even as they denouncealternative approaches. And, of course, the very existence of other, different sociologicalapproaches offers targets for claimsmaking.

There are two familiar temptations to which sociologists are constantly prone. The �rst isthe temptation of method. Its logic is familiar: methodological care is required to make ourevidence convincing; therefore, we must devise operational de�nitions and research designs,choose samples, and apply analytic techniques—usually statistical measures—that representthe highest standards of methodological rigor. The more carefully the sociologist adheres tothese standards, the more compelling the methods. I call this a temptation because itbecomes easy to lose sight of other considerations, so that analysts forget real-world—asopposed to statistical—signi�cance, or so that they come to communicate their �ndings inlanguage and calculations that only a few can understand. These are trade-offs that, if notinherent in the enthusiastic pursuit of methodological rigor, are at least very common.

The second temptation, of course, is that of theory. Here, the sociologist assembles airycastles of ideas, connecting concepts in creative ways, so that nearly all seems explicable, albeitin the abstract. There is terri�c variety among these theoretical perspectives: some are struc-tural, others are cognitive; some deductive, others inductive; some invoke objectivity, otherscelebrate ideology; and so on. But, again, as theories advance, there is the need for careful pre-cision in articulating ideas, ideas so nicely de�ned as to require a special vocabulary that, oncemore, is understood only by a few. Here, the temptation is to drift off into a theoretical worldbounded, if not by tautology, at least by this shared language. Once more, the notion of trade-off seems applicable; the more elaborate and elegant the theory, the fewer those who under-stand and appreciate it, and the greater the distance between the theoretical and real worlds.

It is tempting to give in to either methodological or theoretical excess because theseappear to be ways of making a contribution—or at least a mark—within a particular sociolog-ical arena. But doing so contributes to intradisciplinary claimsmaking in at least two ways.First, of course, these advances are often accompanied by arguments that the old ways—andparticularly other ways—of doing sociology have now been supplanted. Now that we havetruly sophisticated methods or theories, the de�ciencies of other approaches seem evident:sociologists are called to abandon older, failed standards and rally around the new banner.Second, as arenas evolve and turn inward, increasingly cut off from other sociologists by spe-cial techniques and terminology, they set themselves up as targets for critique, for those famil-iar criticisms by sociologists in one arena about the modest substance, incomprehensiblejargon, and improper ideological agendas of sociologists in another. Thus, those who succumbto either of the two temptations often �nd themselves involved in intradisciplinary backbiting,either as claimsmakers or as the targets of others’ claims.

Note, too, that this process only exacerbates outsiders’ critiques of sociology. Homogeneousarenas generate work that is easily seen and portrayed by non-sociologists as insubstantial, incom-prehensible, and ideologically driven. If we want to understand why sociology has such a poorreputation, at least part of the explanation can be found in our discipline’s social organization.12

12. There are other possible interpretations of intradisciplinary strife. Russell Dynes (1974:174) views sociology asa sect, whose members are suspicious that one another’s in�uence is evidence of having “compromised with the corruptworld.”

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Just the Messengers

This is not, however, the explanation we tend to favor. Because virtually all of us focusour interests within a small number of sociological arenas that we consider legitimate, wetend to blame sociology’s problems on sociologists of other stripes, on those besotted by meth-ods, theories, epistemologies, or ideologies different from our own. For professionals whodenounce ethnocentrism and preach the gospel of cultural relativism, we often have remark-ably narrow, rigid views about how that relativism ought to be practiced. If sociology is a prob-lem, we insist that the problem is with other sociologists.

We are also comforted by the notion that we are punished because we boldly speak thetruth; if sociologists are attacked, it is only because we are messengers bearing bad news.Some years ago, the graduate students at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale produceda t-shirt featuring “The Top Ten Reasons to Study Sociology at SIUC.” The list included: “Youlearn unpopular explanations for everything.”13 More formal versions of this account appearwhen sociologists try to respond to our critics. Thus, Bjorklund (2001:36) explains �ction’sharsh portraits of sociologists: “Novelists and sociologists are competitors in a sense; they areboth trying to explain human behavior in what are often very different ways”; and HerbertGans (1989:1) suggests that “the majority of the literary community still believes that only itcan analyze society.”14

This argument is not inconsistent with my own account for intradisciplinary strife, in thatit explains claimsmaking as a product of competition for attention and legitimacy. And, ofcourse, to the degree that American culture celebrates individualism and assigns individualsresponsibility for their fates, sociological explanations may indeed meet with popular resis-tance. Still, a discipline that is suspicious of and reluctant to talk about “individualism,” yetbandies about the term “agency,” probably ought to acknowledge that complaints about jar-gon aren’t merely defensive reactions of those threatened by our blinding insights.

Moreover, we can point to sociology that’s had an impact, particularly in shaping howAmericans view social problems. Perhaps the single most in�uential sociological work of thepast century was Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944). That book documented thenature and effects of racism, articulated contradictions in American culture, and provided anintellectual foundation for thinking about the emerging civil rights movement. Other socio-logical work has at least been widely disseminated. Gans’s (1997) list of 53 sociological best-sellers from the second half of the twentieth century includes several other volumes on racialissues, including two C. Wright Mills Award winners (Tally’s Corner and The Truly Disadvan-taged); virtually all of the titles on his list address one or more social problems. Sometimes, ourmessage does get through.

What Works? Not Being Part of the Problem

Perhaps sociology cannot escape being labeled a social problem. Still, some sociologistsbecome in�uential beyond the narrow bounds of their particular disciplinary arenas, even if

13. Other items on the list pointed to sociology’s incoherent image: “I thought I was signing up for social work”;“We don’t have to learn any math . . . do we?”; “Your parents will have a [sic] heart attack thinking you’re a socialist”;and “It has fewer big words than philosophy.” This reminds us that students are another set of claimsmakers with consider-able exposure to sociology. Casual observation, at least, suggests that many students leave their courses unconvinced ofsociology’s worth.

14. Such arguments cut both ways. Sociologists have largely ignored—or even attacked—some of the most prom-inent journalists who have favored a sociological perspective, such as Tom Wolfe and Vance Packard (Best 2001c; Nelson1978). The vigor with which sociologists denounce “pop sociology” stands in marked contrast with natural scientists’many-faceted efforts to encourage popular understanding of developments in their disciplines. Instead, sociologists peri-odically establish magazines that they hope will be read by non-sociologists, although the writing and editing oftenremain restricted to those in the profession.

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no sociological work can hope to achieve universal acclaim within, let alone outside, sociol-ogy. This raises a question: what can sociologists do to avoid being part of the social problemsof sociology? Can understanding the claimsmaking process help us craft solutions?

I’d like to offer three suggestions. The �rst is familiar: we really ought to watch our lan-guage. Sociologists should not simply write to and for one another. Our jargon is one of theprincipal clubs outsiders use to beat up sociologists, and we love to denounce one another’spompous, awkward language. Clear writing is a prerequisite for reaching a large audience. AsGans (1997:133) notes, “just about all of [sociology’s best-sellers] are jargon-free; whatevertheir other virtues, they are written in a language that at least educated readers can under-stand.” Even if one doesn’t aspire to the best-seller list, gaining recognition from sociologistsoutside one’s home arena requires making oneself—one’s methods and theoretical questions—understandable. The cost of dazzling one’s in-group with a masterful command of its eso-teric vocabulary is almost always the loss of everyone else’s attention. Your brilliance justbecomes part of their construction of sociology as a social problem.

My second suggestion is that we need to remember the importance of evidence. Whenoutsiders do turn to sociologists, it is because they expect—or at least hope—that we actuallyknow things about the real world, things that not everyone else knows. Our authority, ourlegitimacy does not reside in the purity of our outrage, the elegant complexity of our theories,the sophistication of our statistical techniques, or the moral correctness of our politics. Thosepostures may play to admiring audiences within a particular arena, but they rarely have muchappeal beyond its borders; in fact, as we have seen, they are precisely the stuff of which anti-sociological claims are made.

In contrast, evidence counts. The in�uence of the Kinsey Reports—that other great mid-century work of social research—derived from their data; Kinsey and his associates had inter-viewed lots of people, they documented patterns in real-world behavior that contradicted ourculture’s familiar, polite �ctions about sexuality, and that evidence changed how Americansthought about sex.15 Other examples are plentiful. There is now widespread acceptance ofsocial research; journalists and politicians routinely draw upon economic indicators, crimerates, and public opinion polls. Evidence plays an important role in contemporary discourse.It is not a trump card; evidence produced by sociologists does not automatically win argu-ments, but a sociologist who cannot produce evidence—and present it in a clear, convincingmanner—is unlikely to have much in�uence.

Sociologists also need to appreciate that there is widespread suspicion that evidence maybe biased. We live in a complicated world, and we need evidence to understand it. At the sametime, the public recognizes that there are people offering contradictory sets of evidence: policyanalysts who declare that welfare reform is either a success or a failure; politicians who insistthat punishment either does or doesn’t deter crime; scientists who argue that global warningeither does or doesn’t pose a catastrophic threat to life as we know it. There is a danger here; ifpeople suspect that those who promote evidence often offer unreliable information simplybecause it af�rms their own interests or prejudices, why trust any evidence?

This leads to my third suggestion. Sociologists need to acknowledge complexity. Inevita-bly, our theories emphasize particular arguments—that society is fundamentally organizedaround consensus, or around con�icting interests, or whatever. These can be helpful guides tospotting interesting features of the world, but they should not be treated as complete descrip-tions of social life. Obviously, every social system features both consensus (if only becausesocial interaction requires shared understandings) and con�ict (if only because resources arenever suf�cient to sate demand). It is one thing to insist that a particular perspective can

15. Another embarrassment: neither Gunnar Myrdal nor Alfred Kinsey—authors of major mid-century sociologi-cal works that received widespread recognition and had real impact on both policy and public opinion—was trained as asociologist.

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add something to our understanding, but quite another to imply that no other approachhas merit.

Aversion to complexity is hardly limited to sociology. Simplistic, melodramatic por-traits of heroes and villains characterize our popular culture, but also much journalism. Ourculture usually delivers, and we come to expect—and even want—simple stories. Don’ t giveus a lot of contradictory �ndings, just tell us: Does coffee cause cancer, or doesn’t it? Shouldall women over 40 years of age have annual mammograms, or not? Has welfare reformbeen a success, or a failure?

It seems to me that public discourse could tolerate a little more complexity; sociologyhas much to contribute in this regard—if only we can bring ourselves to accept complexity.Life offers relatively few clear-cut choices between good and evil, but lots and lots of trade-offs. Building a bridge or implementing a childhood vaccination program both have risksand costs, but then so do doing without the bridge and not vaccinating children. Our cul-ture, which endorses the principle that human life is not just precious but priceless, has a lotof dif�culty debating whether, say, vaccinations should proceed if they will cause somenumber of children to sicken and die. Advocates try to circumvent this debate by creatingmelodramatically simple alternatives. Vaccine proponents can be counted upon to declarethat harm from vaccines is virtually nonexistent, while failure to vaccinate will have terri-ble, widespread consequences. Opponents will insist that vaccines harm many, and that theydon’t do all that much good. Obviously, such debates could use some good data but, beyondthat, there is a need to accept complexity, the notion of trade-offs. We—both our professionand the larger society—need to recognize that every choice carries costs, and that we canonly weigh and chose among imperfect options.

Sociologists’ reluctance to talk about progress (Best 2001a) is partly rooted in ourdif�culties with complexity. If our counterparts a century ago now seem too optimistic andinsuf�ciently critical, many of our colleagues today appear to view almost any change withsuspicion. Some sociologists offer nostalgic sketches of a better past, while glossing over thedetails—the shorter life expectancies, lower standards of living, limited education, and bru-tal, institutionalized inequalities. Obviously, this world isn’t perfect, but neither was thatone, and I don’t think we ought to pretend that perfection is likely, or even possible. His-tory rarely offers the clear choices of melodrama. Change always has a price. But sociologyoffers some tools for understanding those trade-offs. Instead of pretending they don’ t exist,we can try to understand them, and help others toward that understanding.

I have suggested that sociologists often are charged with being biased. This is usuallyunderstood in terms of political ideology; that is, critics argue that sociologists’ claims can be dis-counted because they represent some political faction. Within in our discipline, these chargesin turn lead to now predictable debates about whether objectivity is possible or evendesirable. My suggestion is intended to circumvent this arguing. If sociologists can respect—even embrace—complexity, if they can avoid melodramatic simplicity and do justice to theambiguities inherent in social life, we are far less likely to be caricatured as mere ideologues.

A Perspective, Not a Problem

Obviously, by considering sociology as a social problem, I do not mean to denounceeither our enterprise or our discipline. But claims about sociology’s shortcomings, whethermade by those outside our ranks or from within them, cannot simply be dismissed. Ourreadiness to become defensive reveals that we are all too aware of, and concerned about,these critiques. That we feel the need to explain to our students that sociology is more thancommon sense, that we complain that we don’t get our fair share of faculty lines, or thatwe feel disappointed by the media’s reluctance to consult sociologists suggests that we’re

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sensitive about outsiders’ poor opinions of our discipline. And, of course, the extraordinaryvolume of sociological writings dedicated to critiques, rebuttals, and refutations of oneanother makes it evident that we care a great deal about our colleagues’ criticisms. More-over, the way claims from external and internal sources mirror each other reveals that ourcritics aren’t just striking out at random.

Even though it has never been a particularly prestigious discipline, sociology has beenremarkably in�uential (Best 2001b; Merton and Wolfe 1995). It is easy to point to sociolog-ical concepts that have made their way, not just into other disciplines, but into the largerculture; charisma, self-ful�lling prophecy, peer group, status symbol, role model, evensigni�cant other—you heard it here �rst! Our success at disseminating these ideas is due to asimple fact: the sociological perspective is a useful way to think about the world. That is, itoften helps to focus on the ways people in�uence one another.

Sociologists seem to spend an awful lot of time jostling with one another, declaring notjust which side we’re on, but which epistemology commands our loyalty. I am not arguingthat this is completely misguided. Ours is a diverse discipline, organized around many differ-ent arenas, and most of us spend most of our time talking to other members in the one or twoarenas we frequent. This is probably inevitable given our numbers, and desirable as a way ofencouraging intellectual activity. Naturally, we can expect rivalries between these arenas, aswe struggle for—for what?

These rivalries should not be treated as holy wars. Most often, we are struggling to beheard—to affect students, place papers in journals, perhaps in�uence the direction of social pol-icy. In gaining those things, what we have to say—the usefulness of our ideas for understandingthe world around us—is almost certainly more important than our cleverness at denouncingothers. The substantive ideas, the evidence, and the clarity of our presentations matter. Theenduring importance of Mills’s (1959) The Sociological Imagination was in its articulation of the linkbetween private troubles and public issues, not in the demolition of the prose of Parsons.

I happen to believe in the sociological perspective’s value. It is a perspective built on rel-ativism, built on the recognition that people understand the world differently. One of themost basic lessons we teach our students is to doubt their own taken-for-granted assump-tions, to avoid ethnocentrism and seek to understand and appreciate others’ cultures andsocial structures. It couldn’t hurt for us to take those lessons to heart, to construct sociol-ogy as a perspective, rather than a problem.

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